The invention concerns a method, a telecommunication network, and a central directory service element for managing components of the telecommunication network.
A telecommunications network is usually composed of different types of agents NE (which agents could also e.g. be “Network Elements” here).
An operator uses a Manager EM (which Manager could e.g. be an “Element Manager” here) to manage these agents. In order to manage a agent, the operator has to carry out some steps for configuring the agent on the manager like providing the address of the NE for communication, the user information to access the NE and so on. Similarly the operator also has to go through a few steps to configure the Manager on the Agent. These steps may vary depending on the type of the agent. Great care has to be taken while performing the administration since any mistake would mean more time will be spent on correcting it. Some times it is also required to configure the same agent on more than one managers.
All the agents in the telecommunications network need not be supplied by the same vendor. Vendors of agents usually provide their own Manager System to manage their NEs. The way these administrative steps have to be carried out on each of these Managers might differ significantly. This introduces additional overhead for the operator since he has to work on different Manager Systems.
Thus, the time and effort spent by the operator can be minimized if there is a more simple way of administering any type of NE on any Element Manger. This solution provides an automatic way of detecting Agents and Managers.
Currently, no solution exists which provides a single and easy way to administer NEs. Some solutions exist for automatic detection of agents in the SNMP world but these are specific to devices which support the SNMP protocol and do not present a generalized approach for all NE types. This solution cannot be extended to other protocols since implementing such a feature might not be possible because of restrictions imposed by the basic principle of the protocol. On the other hand the current idea proposes a generic framework for automatic detection of all type of NEs.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,909,549A describes a “Management station locating method for computer network management system”. This solution is specific to the SNMP protocol
US2003112765A1 describes a “Network devices discovering for data communication network”. This solution is also specific to SNMP protocol FI9901022A describes a “Agent connecting method in telecommunications network”. This solution only allows a Agent to connect to a Network Management system whereas the proposed solution allows a connection to be established from the Network Management system to the NE also.